Can You Run Your

Business With Blood,

Sweat, and Tears?
Volume III
Can You Run Your
Business With Blood,
Sweat, and Tears?
Volume III
Tears

Stephen Elkins-Jarrett
Nick Skinner
Can You Run Your Business With Blood, Sweat, and Tears? Volume III: Tears
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 Dedication
For Eddie and Leia
Training
Encouragement
Announcement
Review
Success
 Abstract
What does it take to successfully lead and manage a business or a team?
Management consultant and HR specialist Stephen-Elkins Jarrett and
organizational development consultant Nick Skinner share their com-
bined experience of how mastery of 15 key areas can help you drive
your business, team, or even yourself to success. Presented using the
acronym of BLOOD, SWEAT, and TEARS, this book, presented in
three volumes, aligns some established models with common sense to
give a practical view with tools and tips gained over years of work-
ing across different industries and sectors. At the heart of the book is
the fascinating study of behavior, discussed through the SPECTRUM
model of behavior, showing how by treating others in the way that they
want to be treated, we can engage, develop, and lead them to achieve
meaningful goals.

Keywords
behavior, development, HR, human resources, leadership, management,
performance, SPECTRUM, strategy, team, teamwork
 Contents
Foreword..............................................................................................xiii
Introduction to Blood, Sweat, and Tears.................................................. xv
Chapter 1 T Is for Training.................................................................1
Chapter 2 E Is for Encouragement....................................................21
Chapter 3 A Is for Announcements..................................................33
Chapter 4 R Is for Reviews...............................................................47
Chapter 5 S Is for Success.................................................................59
Chapter 6 Conclusions.....................................................................65
Index....................................................................................................73
 Foreword
Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Elkins-Jarrett & Skinner

Stephen and Nick have packed a huge amount into the volumes of this tril-
ogy. Their years of business consulting experience is evident as they make
every element wholly understandable and immensely practical—this is not
a book about business theory; it is a book to be put into immediate action.
Using the acronym B-L-O-O-D S-W-E-A-T-and-T-E-A-R-S, they
consider 16 areas of importance in business success (the “and” is an
important area, hence 16) and within these incorporate aspects as dispa-
rate as time management, presentation skills, work–life balance, vision,
and performance management, in addition to the chapter titles such as
Brand, Leadership, Opportunities, and so forth using illustrations from
areas as diverse as Psychology and Star Wars.
Running through the book is the recurring theme of understand-
ing and appreciating human behavior in its many facets. They expound
“Spectrum” behavioral psychometric, which fits with the themes of their
book—approachable, easy to understand, and practical. All other Jungian
models would also work, but I agree with them that Spectrum’s simplic-
ity enhances the ability to apply the learning effortlessly and across all
cultures.
Throughout the chapters, they make use of well-known, tried-and-
tested theories including Tuckman, Maslow, Kotter, and Hersey &
Blanchard—only models and structures that have stood the test of time
rather than any that are likely to be in vogue today and forgotten tomor-
row. Within these, they give their own adaptations and developments
driven by decades of management consulting experience, which make
them more practical and more applicable.
If you are looking for a book that covers a wide range of criteria for
business success and is eminently readable, down-to-earth, practical, and
xiv FOREWORD

developed through the crucible of decades of experience, Blood, Sweat,

and Tears is a wise choice.

Stephen Berry

MBA, MSc, BSc(Hons), FCMA, CGMA, ACIB, DipFS, PgD

Author of Strategies of the Serengeti (2006; 2nd ed., 2010)
and
Teach Yourself Strategy in a Week (2012; 2nd ed., 2016)
 Introduction to Blood,
Sweat, and Tears
“I have nothing to offer except blood, sweat and tears!” paraphrased
from a speech given to the UK houses of parliament in the dark days
of 1940 by Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

Hello and welcome to “Blood, Sweat, and Tears!” Why did we write it?
What is it all about? And who the heck are these guys anyway?

Stephen’s Story
My story is that I have been working since I was 16. My background is
strange but has given me an insight into the commercial world that others
don’t get. I did not have a classical educational background. My parents
divorced when I was 11. My father was in sales and my mother a sports
teacher and legal secretary. At 16, my mother said “leave school and go
to work, we need the money.” I trained as a chef, day release at Slough
College, near Heathrow airport, and I left after I had completed my
OND and HND (Ordinary and Higher National Diplomas) to work
with my father in the construction industry. I qualified in NFBPM at
Diploma level. At the same time, I was involved in Amateur Dramatics.
While in a play, I was approached by a director who asked me if I fancied
quitting my job to be his personal assistant and learn his trade from the
bottom. He was a Coopers and Lybrand Management Consultant, now
running his own business. This was a single act of kindness that changed
my world forever.
I went to night school to do my A levels, did a distance learning
Degree with UEL in Industrial Psychology—now called Organizational.
I then qualified in Psychometrics, Life Coaching, NLP, CBT, did an
advanced Diploma in Organizational Psychology at Oxford learning
and then finally got my Master’s in Organizational Psychology just a
few years ago. Parallel to this, I worked full time for Mike at Manskill
xvi INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

Associates, watching, learning, listening, and delivering soft skill train-

ing, facilitated workshops, strategy workshops, leadership development,
and management and supervisory training and coaching. I also joined
the CIPD and learned everything I could about HR and worked in HR
departments as an interim for some great HR directors such as Julie
Sutton and talent directors such as Joanne Rye. I worked as an interim
HR director, HR manager, employee relations manager, caseworker, a
TUPE project manager, change, takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions.
I saw and learned more from this strange and unusual journey through
the commercial world than I would have done with a “proper Job” as my
wife calls it and in a traditional career along the way. I worked in catering,
hospitality, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries, and in scientific
institutions and laboratories. I had also worked in construction, prop-
erty, IT, finance, banking, FMCG, utilities, high-voltage power stations,
supermarkets, motor industry, and several others, delivering soft skills
training, group facilitation, coaching, team work and team building, and
lots more. In totality, I have worked in the biggest and the smallest and
everything in between; and one thing remained constant for me—it is all
the same. When recruiters look for someone with managerial experience
in a certain industry, any manager could learn the new job, but man man-
agement skills remain a constant. Eighty percent is behavior and twenty
percent technical skills and knowledge; and you can learn this bit as you
go. Richard Branson said, “If anyone asks you if you can do this job, say
yes and then learn it as you go.” He has always done this.

Nick’s Story
My story is almost the opposite. Raised in Hertfordshire, I scrapped the
grades needed to do a first degree before taking up a graduate job, provid-
ing business and project accounting support to scientists. This was in the
late 1980s and the UK was still reeling from the impacts of Thatcherism,
where large swathes of the UK infrastructure that had traditionally been
operated using public money were being forced down a route that made
them think more commercially. The reaction to the kind of externally and
politically induced change created an organizational stress that taught
me a lot. I realized quickly that while finance was important, there was
 INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS xvii

more to business than the accountant’s view. Hence, I shifted away from
finance and into broader business commercial management, com-
pleting an MBA with distinction in 1997 from the University of
Hertfordshire and then shifting my career to London to work in
the field of commercializing intellectual property, working as a busi-
ness administrator for a spin-out company commercializing break-
throughs in cancer technology, developing plans for seed funds and
managing a large network of technology transfer stakeholders. Again,
in this role, I was providing commercial and business support to
some very clever scientists. I moved back into agricultural sciences
in 1999, working on business plans and change programs in that
sphere for the next 13 years. It was a long time, but there were so
many projects and exciting new businesses being developed that it
was really more like four or five different jobs. Certainly, by the time
I moved on from there, I had earned my projects management wings,
acting as the leader of a number of change programs which (mostly)
went according to plan. There were some car crashes of course, but they
got fewer, so I must have been getting better! Sometime while there,
I attended an eye-opening training program and came across some very
bright cookies doing organizational development at Roffey Park. My
training with these guys made me finally realize that what really goes
on in business is human interaction, and that to get great outcomes
in business all you needed was great humans. Then it all started to
fall in place. Great business outcomes are about great people, so if all
humans are great this should be easy, right? Wrong! There’s so much
that we humans create and fantasize about and are scared of that pre-
vent us from being at our best. I strongly believe that organizations
that can remove these blocks and find a proper level of human connec-
tion can build trust and once you have trust then we can really start
to go places. I took an MSc in organizational and people development
through Roffey Park and in 2012 backed my learning with the estab-
lishment of Poppyfish People Development, thereby fulfilling a career
dream of helping business capitalize on the potential of the human in
the system and engaging in client work across multiple industries and
coming across Steve Jarrett, and his SPECTRUM model in 2013. As
opposites attract, we make a good team.
xviii INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

Coming Together
We met when a mutual friend and client, Ian Cresswell, a people-focused
leader to whom we are both indebted, intuitively thought we would work
well together in his organization. We did. Nick is more cautious and care-
ful, methodical, analytical, and checks everything and Stephen, dives in,
cracks on, and says, “Everything will be alright in the end, if it is not
alright it is not the end!” (Indian Proverb). Stephen thinks getting stuck
in is the answer and Nick knows that to reflect and think about it first
often gets a better outcome. Nick acts as the brake to Stephen’s accelerator
pedal and on average we work off each other well. Like in many relation-
ships, the only challenges come when we both want to steer. We both
believe in the power of dreams and that positivity and energy really count
for something.
Our work together has been varied, and challenging, but always reward-
ing, working as coaches, consultants, trainers, facilitators, and leaders of
learning and behavior change for many individuals, teams, and businesses.
In a nutshell, we help our clients align people performance with organiza-
tion performance. We do this in many different industry sectors, including
technical services, information technology, scientific research, start-ups, and
construction. We don’t spend much on marketing; instead, our growth has
been through word of mouth and personal recommendation. We think that
is important. It’s part of our own brand.
We are guided by the simple principle that the best people build the
best businesses. In a world increasingly driven by technical development
and big data, workplaces remain a human environment. The performance
of your business depends massively upon the talents, motivations, and
behaviors of the people who work within it.
We want to see those people at their best, in a space where their talents
shine.
To work with us is to recognize that each of us has our own dreams,
aspirations, and desires, and that if we can tap into this rich vein of
motivation, then we can all fly. Our motives for writing this series of
books are to capture some of the “common sense” activities that we think
make a difference to how businesses perform. Most of what you will
read here is not rocket science, but it is hopefully practical and resonates
 INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS xix

enough with your own experiences to allow you to feel confident and
capable at making great things happen. It’s a chance for us to share what
we have learnt through the blood, sweat, and tears of our work, and we
hope that you find the content rewarding.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

“Blood, Sweat, and Tears” is a simple-to-follow trilogy of books offering
most of the advice you would need to develop, grow, and succeed as a man-
ager or leader in any team or business from a one-man self-employed per-
son to a large enterprise. The ideas in this set of books have come about
after many years of consulting practice—working with the great, the good
(and even the bad). From seeing businesses fail and learning from their
mistakes through to business that did great things and were successful, the
authors have picked up the best practices and principles that guide one to
success. These books attempt to share our learning. The principles, ideas,
and ways of thinking that are outlined in these pages will help to focus your
thinking with regard to self-development, team development, and business
development.
According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start busi-
nesses fail within the first 18 months. A whopping 80 percent crash and
burn after having the chance to send out only one lot of corporate Christ-
mas cards. But why? The reasons that businesses fail are painful in that as
much as many of these failures are easily avoidable.
At surface level, the primary reason businesses fail is that they run
out of cash. But the reasons for that are deeper than apparent shallowness
of the cash drawer. In our combined lives as consultants, we have seen
plenty, advised many, and been ignored by lots!
How can you avoid these failures? Only through the application of
“blood, sweat, and tears.”
We have created BLOOD, SWEAT, and TEARS as acronyms for
all the things that you can do that will help to drive success; setting out
attitudes, behaviors, and practices that you can follow to help you achieve
your and your company’s goals. The ideas are developed throughout the
following pages, with each letter of the acronyms given its own chapter.
The acronyms are summarized here in brief:
xx INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

Book One

BLOOD is the life source of your success.

B stands for BRAND: Can you build the right brand for you and for
your business and demonstrate alignment between the two?
L stands for LEADERSHIP: Do you have the right skills to understand
the needs of others and get the best out of yourself and your team?
O stands for OPPORTUNITIES: Can you manage the process of
generating leads and prospects and take advantage of the opportu-
nities that will grow your business?
O stands for OUTCOMES: Are you focusing on the right outcomes
to hit your goals? How do you set goals and objectives?
D is for DECISIONS: Can you make the right decisions that lead
to success?

Book Two

SWEAT is symbolic of the exercises that you should constantly be

focused on.

S stands for STRATEGIC DIRECTION: Do you have the right

vision, mission, strategy, and structure for your business to succeed?
W stands for WHAT IF?: Do you know what to do in those “What
If . . .” moments? Can you and your team be resilient or forward
thinking enough to take steps to avoid confusion and chaos in a
fast-changing world?
E stands for EVIDENCE: Can you find the evidence to back your
intuition? What can you do to get the information you need to act
for the best?
A stands for ACTION: Can you overcome the urge to procrastinate
and take action when you need to?
T stands for TIME: Can you get your timings right and manage
everything you have to do in a way that keeps you in control?

Don’t forget the and (&): Don’t forget yourself and enjoyment and
quality time and family and friends, etc.
 INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS xxi

Book Three

TEARS are the things that will refresh and reward you.

T stands for TRAINING: Are you training the right people in the
right way? The essential tool that makes you ready to cope with the
demands of tomorrow. Train people all the time and so they can
leave—then treat them so they don’t want to!
E is for ENCOURAGEMENT: To get the best out of others, you
must know what drives and motivates them. Can you give encour-
agement to others and know where to find your own?
A stands for ANNOUNCEMENTS: Do you announce the important
things in the right way? How can you present for maximum impact?
R stands for REVIEW: Do you take time to reflect and review the
past with an eye on the future? Taking time at each step of the way
to look back at what you have achieved, what you can learn from
it, and how this can help you for future planning.
S stands for SUCCESS: Can you deliver success for you, your team,
and your business? How will you know you are succeeding and
what to do next? Taking time to enjoy your successes has a narcotic
effect, leaving you wanting more!

Our experience tells us that this is what makes a difference in success-

ful organizations. If you get it right, the benefits can be stunning. Here’s
what happens if you get it wrong:
If you cannot identify or build your BRAND, then you’ll be faced
with confused customers and staff who don’t really know what the busi-
ness (or you, if you are the brand) stands for. You’ll have to accept that
others will define it for you.
If you do not develop the right LEADERSHIP skills, you will create
anxiety and frustration for others and increase the propensity for false
starts and you will have to accept that people will be frustrated. You will
start to lose people, starting with the best ones first.
If you fail to act on OPPORTUNITIES, then you can expect
finances to take a direct hit. The implications of this are obvious. While
this is playing out, you will generate anxiety for people who will realize
that the writing is on the wall.
xxii INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

If you fail to identify the right OUTCOMES, then people do the

wrong thing. False starts happen and people get frustrated and confused.
You cannot track progress. Tasks never finish. Morale drops. People leave.
And so do customers.
If you struggle with DECISIONS, then you can expect people to get
frustrated and for confusion to reign. Lack of decision making provokes
anxiety and slows your business down.
If you fail to define and communicate a STRATEGIC DIRECTION,
then chaos abounds. Your business becomes a lawless territory without
guidance or a moral compass. People make up their own strategy and resist
your efforts to pull them away from that because they do not know any
better. You will never have buy in and without buy in you will be in a
state of constant confusion. You will also be handing over control to the
micro-managers.
If you fail to spot and train yourselves for the WHAT IF . . . moments,
then you will create anxiety as people will not feel equipped to deal with
change and you will be left behind by the world. You also risk jeopardiz-
ing your business by reducing its resilience to the point where the slightest
wave or market tremor could threaten its existence.
If you fail to secure EVIDENCE for changes, you will cause frustra-
tion and run the risk of a number of false starts where you thought you
were doing the right thing but, as it turns out, you are not. Oops! More
prework and evidence might have helped. You’ll also have egg on your
face and could have just cost the business lots of money.
If you fail to take ACTION, you will condemn your business or proj-
ect to the scrapheap of time. The road to hell is paved with good inten-
tions, so they say. So sort out your project plan and make it happen.
If you fail to get your TIMINGS right, you will create inefficiencies,
frustration, and will probably lose money. Tasks will slip. And if you ask
people to do what they see as the wrong thing at the wrong time, you will
encounter resistance. Resistance is not futile, that’s why we do it.
If you fail to TRAIN your people, then your plans will be sabotaged
by people who cannot do what you ask of them and who will not be able
to grow themselves at a rate that allows them to deliver any growth to
your business. People will be frustrated and will not feel important. Good
people will leave while the less able struggle. As the old cliché goes: What
 INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS xxiii

if we train our people and they leave? Well, what if we don’t train them
and they stay?
Failure to ENCOURAGE people leads to alienation at work and
development and strategic goals not being met. In addition, negativity
will seep into the workplace and will be visible to customers. A negative
team is a poorly performing team. You also run the risk of sabotage, where
people dig their heels in to actively prevent and delay progress (yes, it does
happen).
If you fail to ANNOUNCE what you are doing, then you risk people
putting their own reasons behind your motives. Nobody likes surprises
and when people see the action but without knowing the reasons, they
have no chance to buy in, no chance to support, or to even realize what
is going on. This creates resistance and can even promote fear as people
often fantasize about losing their jobs.
If you fail to REVIEW, then you are condemning yourself to repeat-
ing the same old mistakes again and again. Doing the same thing time
after time and expecting a different outcome each time is a first definition
of madness.
And if you fail to SUCCEED, then celebrate small wins (because
they will always be there) and keep trying, keep working, and think about
which of the other 14 areas you needed to work at.

What about the “And”?

But what about that small conjunctive in the middle? The word “and.”
The word “and” is the glue that effortlessly ties everything together. It
gives the three words meaning. Without the word “and,” the three words
BLOOD, SWEAT, TEARS appear nothing more than a list. But when
we bring in the conjunctive “and,” the three suddenly have cumulated
impact, allowing the three to come together in a more powerful way. So,
the “and” is more than just a word; it actually means something and pulls
the concept together.
To this end, we have devoted a chapter to the “and.” So, what is it?
In our view, the “and” is the personal strength, power, and dedication
that you will bring to your working world when you are at your best.
The “and” includes your own mental health and physical well-being, and
xxiv INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

it includes looking after your family and those around you and finding
equal space in your life for all things.
So, read on. Challenge your mind to think creatively about how you
can embed these ideas into your everyday thinking, thinking that will
help you to define your vision and identify your product, price it cor-
rectly, take it to market, get business, make a profit, keep your customers
wanting more, motivate and inspire your staff, delight your suppliers,
reward your stakeholders and your loved ones, and give yourself a sense
of satisfaction and delight in who you are and what you have achieved.

Our Methods
Throughout these books, we employ some old techniques tried and
tested since the ancient Greeks and developed further by a multitude
of respected gurus, psychologists, organizational development theorists,
coaches, management consultants, and successful businessmen and
women from around the world. But we also give you new ideas and our
latest thinking on some blended approaches which we have used and
which we know work. We will give you war stories of where things didn’t
work and companies got it so wrong—and compare these to where they
got it so right and share that best practices with you, giving you the best
chance to set up and run your business or team successfully. We will
­introduce you to some models to help you conceptualize some of the
more important areas.
How you use this series of books is up to you. You can read the books
cover-to-cover in chapter order or jump directly to the area where you
need help today and use it as a standalone chapter without the rest of the
book(s) holding you! So, if you just want to target specific areas, then of
course you can.
We hope very much that you enjoy “BLOOD, SWEAT, and TEARS”
and that you can use it to fuel a wonderful success story.

Steve Elkins-Jarrett and Nick Skinner

London
April 2018
 CHAPTER 1

T Is for Training
Are You Training the Right People
in the Right Way?

“Train People so they can leave—treat them so they don’t want to!”
—Richard Branson

People are hard wired to learn. We learn from the day we are born.
Shaping what we learn turns us into the people we are today, and focused
learning trains us to cope with situations and events and allows us to do
things better, faster, and with more success.Training people at work is
all about teaching, coaching, facilitating, and sharing the best ways to
do something in a way that allows them to be at their best and to fulfil
their potential. It also includes showing others the skills and behaviors
needed to carry out tasks or behave in a certain way, so that another
person can then do it for themselves without you.

What’s Your Training Strategy?

As a leader or manager, you need to decide what your approach is to
training. And before we go too far down this line, let’s lay our cards on
the table:
We believe that training is paramount to your own success and to the
success of your business and that if you can only afford to invest in one
thing, then invest in your people and the development of their skills.
The returns and heightened levels of employee engagement that you can
get through good-quality training will prove this to be true.
2 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

Many companies throw money at training and tick the box that says
training delivered, then sit back and wait for an improvement to happen,
but that is not how training works. Training should not be viewed as some-
thing that is done to your employees, but rather should be viewed as devel-
oping a growth mindset culture of continuous performance improvement,
learning, and self-development. Doing this motivates staff, keeps them with
you longer, makes them more productive, and they will go the extra mile
for you if you invest in them. In thinking about your training strategy, it’s
worth bearing in mind the 70-20-10 principle. This is a view that training
should be 70 percent experiential, 20 percent social learning from peers,
and 10 percent formal training, most of which is likely to be externally
delivered. In other words, for best results, you need a mixed approach.
A training strategy involves the systematic training and improvement of
people within the organization so that they, and the company, can achieve
their objectives and both personal and corporate goals. Training strategies
vary according to requirements, but important components include:

• Objectives: why are we doing this; what impact do we expect to

see; and how does it move us closer toward fulfilling our mission
and vision?
• What methods will we use? Considering:
?? Team building and engagement: either within one team if a

whole department attends or across several teams if learners

come from various teams and departments and learn from each
other to gain an understanding of what other teams actually
do (especially impactful if you can mix the levels in business so
that directors attend with customers facing staff, middle, junior,
and senior managers, and supervisors), then all learn together,
fostering a team spirit across the whole business.
?? Team development—as above

?? Leadership development (including high-potential leadership)

?? Reflective and Action Learning sets

?? Coaching and mentoring

• Who will receive the training?

?? How do we know what people need? Will it be staff only? Will

you include subcontractors or visiting staff, or students?

 T Is for Training 3

• Where will we do it and who will lead on this?

?? Can we deliver in-house, will we send people off site, will we

employ a learning and development specialist?

• How will we assess the impact?

Plus, of course, how much money are you prepared to put in?

Assessing the Return on Investment (ROI) of Training

It seems reasonable to assume that the amount of money that you dedicate
to training earns some form of return. Otherwise why do it? Measuring the
return on investment, also known as RoI, is an important factor in many
businesses, especially where competition for internal resources is either
deeply political, highly competitive, or both. Some businesses and manag-
ers are obsessed by RoI. There is a trend to this obsession, in that, in our
experience, such attitudes are predominant in businesses that demonstrate
a closed mindset to training, fearing that all they are doing by training their
people is upskilling someone so they can leave. These are foolish thoughts.
The miserable “What if we train our people and they leave?” question should
be responded to with “What if we don’t train them and they stay?” It’s a hor-
rid prospect. We believe that it is important to understand and appreciate
the impact that training has on people and your business, but you need to
understand that many of these benefits are intangible (like cultural growth,
engagement, and happiness).* RoI where used can take many forms from
the speed it takes to do something, to the number produced every hour or
day. It might be that the impact will be found in growing sales, increased
profits, happier staff, time to fill vacancies, average length of time employees
stay with you, internal promotions, team scores, customer service score/net
promoter scores, waste, and so on. In truth, almost every aspect can be mea-
sured and this shows that training pays, now, later, and forever.

*
Actually, we believe that you can measure these things, but that would
take us to a depth of discussion that is beyond the scope of this book. If
you are seeking a good book on the power of happiness, then we suggest
you read Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
4 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

Establishing Training Needs

Many organizations capture training needs by conducting a Training Needs
Analysis (TNA). This process creates a document usually owned by the
Human Resources team, and is built upon using data generated from
discussions held as part of performance appraisal. A TNA provides informa-
tion on the training and skills development requirements of all members of
each team or business and is a key step in preparing a training plan. A good
TNA will identify the gap between current and required levels of knowledge,
skills, and aptitude and identify what the general content of training should
be. It will form the foundation of a training plan and also give a baseline for
the evaluation of it. If managed properly, it will ensure that appropriate and
relevant training is delivered. This all sounds ideal, and wonderfully logical.
However, in our experience, TNAs tend to be out of date, poorly controlled
and even more poorly managed. On top of this, they are often just one
person’s view of the needs of another. They are well intentioned, but often
fail to detect deeper learning needs. Instead, and as a consequence of poorly
co-ordinated TNAs, many training initiatives are knee-jerk responses based
on the view of one person—“You need to go on a presentation skills course!”
In truth, you can determine the needs of individuals in many ways, includ-
ing TNAs, but the best of these include input from the individuals and
their peers, and not just the line manager or someone in central HR. This
more detailed understanding of others can be through appraisal through a
360-degree feedback, but also by working closely with these individuals,
understanding their needs (See our discussion on the modern applications
of Maslow hierarchy in the first volume of this trilogy of Blood, Sweat, and
Tears). Another key factor to consider is the individuals own mix of skill/
willingness combination (also covered in the “Blood” book), and by helping
them be able to do what needs to be done to get actions underway (see the
Forcefield exercise in our second book, “Sweat”).
To be most effective, a training plan should include—for each person
in your business:

• What will be learnt?

• Why?
• By whom?
• When?
 T Is for Training 5

• How?
• When will it be complete?
• How will the training be evaluated? What will be the impact on
the business and what will be the RoI?

Are You Training the Right People?

Most companies spend 80 percent of their training budget on the top
20 percent of staff 1 and this equates to about 7 percent of the gross turnover
spent on training by the top 100 companies in the UK. The rest spent less
than 1 percent. The top 20 percent aspect is interesting, for even if you
can make a 10 percent difference to the efficiency and performance of this
group, you will only increase efficiency by 2 percent. In addition, the average
time spent on personal development is 2 weeks in classroom and on courses
by the leadership groups, and only 3 to 4 days by most staff. The average
spend is over £2,000 per executive per year (the Training Report 2015) and
under £15 per staff member per year. But if you spent 80 percent of your
training budget on the 80 percent staff and still made a 10 percent differ-
ence, it could increase your turnover by 8 percent. After all, your customer-
facing staff and fee-earning staff are rarely the executives.

The training spend problem

1
Forbes—Josh Bersin 4th Feb. 2014 www.forbes.com
6 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

The illustration shows the typical relationship between performance

and training spend. Many organizations show a performance distribution as
shown on the diagram. This suggests that somewhere between 10 percent
and 20 percent of staff fall into the Low Performance category. These might
be new staff who do not yet have the skills to do their job well, or they might
be staff with longer service but who cannot, or will not, perform. At the top
end of the scale are the 10 percent to 20 percent of staff who fall into the
Top Performer category. These are the stars who drive the business on. Gen-
erally speaking, it is at these two ends of the performance distribution that
organizations spend their training budget. Rather like a classroom teacher,
80 percent of your manager’s time is spent dealing with 10 percent of the
poorest performers in your team and also the top 10 percent of performers
who can be equally demanding. The 80 percent of staff in the middle—the
staff who turn up on time, do a good job, cause no issues with managers—are
largely forgotten and only get 20 percent of the manager’s time and this time
is mainly at team meetings, 121s (one-to-ones) (if they get one), and the
annual appraisal, and maybe setting daily tasks and longer-term goals,
targets, and objectives. This is also the group that often receive the poorest
share of the training budget because attention is focused at the low and high
ends of the performance scale. Spend at the two ends of the performance scale
are higher than in the middle, where greater benefits might accrue. If this is
true—and we believe it is—surely companies should reverse this thinking
and spend much more of their budget improving skills across the board.
Add to this the belief that most UK companies have that about
80 percent of persons’ ability to do a job is directly proportionate to the
correct and appropriate behaviors being used and only 20 percent based
on the tasks, skills, and abilities of staff;2 and given the fact that 75 percent
of corporate training budget is spent on compulsory and legal training,
such as health and safety, first aid, data protection, equal opportunities,
diversity, discrimination, and local and national induction, we believe
companies are spending their training budgets in the wrong places.
Our belief is quite simple; spend more of your budget on the
customer-facing and fee-earning staff and focus it on behavior and under-
standing oneself and others.

2
https://www.thebalance.com
 T Is for Training 7

In four studies on companies that tried this new innovative ap-

proach and which we have worked with, we have seen results echoing the
following3,4:

• 26 percent more revenue per employee

• 40 percent lower staff turnover
• Lower recruitment costs
• Quicker to fill vacancies
• 87 percent better ability to employ the right people for new jobs
• 156 percent better time management of leaders to be strategic and
drive the bigger picture
• Lower staff absence (higher attendance); various positive percent-
ages from 2 to 9 percent more staff attending per day than in the
previous year
• Higher sales and more upselling up to 20 percent per annum
• Higher staff satisfaction survey scores from 5.7/10 to 7+/10
• Higher NPS (net promoter scores) from customers; a rise from
6 to 7+/10—every company has a unique score, so the worst was
7 and the best over 9
• More repeat business—80 percent customers came back again
• Higher motivation and morale of staff

A lot of companies in the UK talk about competencies in terms of

skills, knowledge, and behaviors:

Skills: the physical abilities to carry out a task or a series of tasks to a

desired standard.
Knowledge: to know how to do a task or solve something or the mental
ability to complete the above tasks well.
Behaviors: the appropriate voice pitch, tone, volume, and content
with the right facial mask and body language so that the person
they are dealing with can fully understand both what and how they
are communicating.

3
Deloitte study 2015/16—www2.deloitte.com millennial survey
4
Success Profile 2016 http://www.ddiworld.com/products/success-profiles
8 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

Companies are spending most of their money on the top 20 percent

of staff in leadership and management roles and training these leaders in
the skills and knowledge areas and less on behaviors.
We think they should spend most of their money on the 80 percent
of staff who are fee earning and customer facing and more on behavior
and less on knowledge and skills most of which can be learned on the job
using the 70-20-10 method of training delivery.

How Can This Be Done Effectively?

Companies use behavioral profiling tools to get senior staff to under-
stand their behaviors, like Thomas International’s DISC, Myers-Briggs
MBTI, SDI, Insights, and LIFO and include 360s, teams and Saville and
Holdsworth’s OPQ, NEO’s Big-5, and SPECTRUM. In the UK, Char-
tered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the British
Psychological Society (BPS) say over 70 percent of all companies use
psychometrics and we completed over 4 million tests nationally in the UK,
with an average spend of over £100 per profile; this could be worth
millions spent on just 20 percent of all working adults.
In our practice, we have settled on the use of the SPECTRUM model
and profile and suggest it can support training and development in the
following ways:

• By profiling staff before joining to see how closely they match your
values.
• By profiling new job roles before they are filled to suggest best
behavioral fit.
• By giving all staff a model of behavior with common language
and a tool they can all use to understand themselves and others in
minutes, meaning they can relate to colleagues and customers in
seconds and better deal with stress, pressure, and conflict.
• By enabling managers to talk to their staff in their language to
motivate them better.
• By allowing staff to relate to customers and pick up on upsell
opportunities.
 T Is for Training 9

• By allowing competencies to be described using behaviors in a

common language so that everyone knows what needs to be done
and how a job should be carried out.
• By giving all staff (not just top 20 percent) access to a better under-
standing of their behavior and how it impacts on others.
• By acknowledging that we are taught as children to treat others
how WE want to be treated, but this is wrong! We have to treat
others how THEY want to be treated.

The key thing with training is that whatever you chose to “impose”
from the center, you must also allow people to pursue their own goals.
You must allow them to maintain a growth mindset where the phase
“I can’t” is soon overcome. Whatever method you use, once you have
established the training needs of a person or a group of people, you have
the responsibility to then deliver that solution through:

1. Learning on the job from others who are great at their jobs—
mentoring and teamwork. How do others do it and can they show
me? Who are your champions? May not be managers and leaders.
2. Learning from online materials; written, spoken, and video, CD ROMs,
and books; both e-books and hard copies based on the preference of
the learners. Take a learning styles survey at www.evaluationstore.com
to find your learning style. Most people enjoy watching media, listen-
ing to, or reading something about their jobs or area of interest. Plus,
this is cheaper and can be done in the employees’ own time.
3. Learning with support from a coach who watches you work and
gives you feedback on your style, behaviors, and techniques and
helps you to make small improvements. Like making a more
impactful presentation by him/her watching you and directing the
way you might do it differently, change your voice pitch, tone, or
volume, restructure it, use more pictures, be more animated, etc.
The most expensive, but in our opinion the best and most effective,
training is 121.
4. Attending training courses, college, universities, and business
schools etc., here you have a whole industry at your feet and an
10 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

established network of learning establishments that will be only too

happy to squeeze one more on their course. These courses can be
“tool box talks” for 1 hour, “skill bite” sessions for 2 to 4 hours, or
1 to 2 days courses or even 1 week, 1 month, or block release to a
college for 3 months at a time over 2 to 3 years, and so on. Great as
you are with other learners and can gain as much from them as you
do the courses.
5. Learning from self-discovery from being inquisitive and asking ques-
tions how, why, where, and what? Can I do this better or differently?
When Edison invented the light bulb, he didn’t try to make a candle
burn brighter, he looked at a new way to light a room. Allowing
people to devote certain percentages of their time to pursuing their
own curiosity at work can reap substantial benefits and is personally
rewarding. It can create innovative new approaches to complex work
problems and create new commercial or process opportunities where
none were previously thought to exist. Note that this is the cheapest
and is highly effective, but your culture must support it. As a leader
or manager this also requires the most trust.
6. Sharing best practice inside your organization or outside learn-
ing from other companies. Is it possible that a construction
company could learn something from an investment bank or vice
versa? Such cross-referenced activities and inquiries can acceler-
ate learning in quantum leaps, allowing us to learn from the best
behaviours and methods of others.

Learning on the Job from Others

On-the-job training , also known as OJT, is one of the strongest training

methods because it is planned, organized, and conducted at the employ-
ee’s workplace and as such has an unrivalled validity. On-the-job training
gives people confidence and allows new trainees to be inducted efficiently
and quickly into the company.
Self-esteem, high yield and professionalism are always high in those
organizations that employ a logical and reasonable on-the-job training
program. Such approaches empower staff to apply their new skills. This
form of training is usually the principal method used for augmenting
 T Is for Training 11

employee skills and escalating output and efficiency. It is mainly suitable

for developing expertise distinctive to an employee’s job, chiefly in those
positions whose work is relatively easy to learn and which requires locally
owned equipment and facilities. By looking at the key outputs of your
job, as identified in the first volume in this trilogy, you can easily see
which outputs require the training first and need higher productivity, less
waste, more efficiency, and so on. You can measure the time it takes to
produce or carry out a task and see it improve after training and over time.
Learning can be accelerated where a nominated expert is involved.
An expert should be assigned to each employee involved in on-the-job
training to make it successful. All these experts; or champions as we also
like to call them, are the best persons you have at that task and may not
be a manager and may even be several different members of staff. These
people have significant relevant knowledge and a positive attitude. They
are accountable and responsible for carefully planning the training and
also conducting it effectively. On-the-job training is one of numerous
ways by which a company might opt to impart the knowledge and skills
its employees require. Compare being taught by the best painter and
decorator the firm has on its books, to copy and watch the tricks of
the trade first hand to being taught in college by a lecturer who has not
worked as a painter or decorator for some years and it is in the classroom
environment. Yes, he will learn how to do but not as well as fast or with
the techniques that are not “in the book.” Your staff members with high
skill and high willingness are great for this role, and even high-skilled
and low-willingness staff can have their mojo restored by asking them to
serve others in this way.

Learning Online

In recent years, there has been a massive growth in online learning, with
much content being “gamified” to make it more engaging. The main attrac-
tion for this is the low cost with which these packages can be sustained, and
without doubt there is some excellent content being built and larger compa-
nies are offering certain standard packages online. Very often, these include
mandatory courses central to the businesses’ key activities. For instance, if
you join a construction company, you might well be offered online training
12 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

in health and safety, manual handling, handling of dangerous materials, etc.

Some businesses go the whole hog and attempt to move their full learning
catalog online. In our minds, this removes the human aspect from the process
and moves training toward a “tick box” philosophy. Thus, online training
should be part of your offering but not the entire sum of your package.
The material available covers a variety of programs and courses
from traditional four-year universities to completely online career col-
leges. For younger learners, many colleges and universities have begun
to accept credits/points earned via free massive open online courses
(MOOCs), the most recent advance in online education. Free online
courses such as these can help learners fulfill general education require-
ments at little to no cost and can give credits that count toward other
qualifications.
Online learning is great for people with family commitments and also
suits the changing demographics of the workplace, plus it’s more carbon
friendly. Why fly me to Dubai for a week of training when I can do the
whole course from my lounge while still wearing my pyjamas? Plus, there
is a side effect to online learning; it keeps me computer literate, and might
even grow my skills. This is an important consideration in many manual
industries where people do not sit at a computer all day. The massive
growth in the use of mobile devices also helps here, with people intui-
tively picking up how to use new technology thanks to some very clever
people working in the user experience departments of Apple, Samsung,
and other technology businesses.

Learning from Coaching and Mentoring

Getting support from a coach is, in our opinion, unparalleled and power-
ful. The great benefit of coaching is that you are very likely to see quick,
positive results as an outcome. This is because coaching is participative, and
people tend to learn and adopt new habits more easily when they are actively
engaged in the learning process. It is also very personal and goes deep. As
soon as a coaching session ends, you can implement a new practice. Coach-
ing is very similar to learning on the job, but we feel it is more likely to
be a behavioral change rather than getting better at a task. In the busi-
ness world, there is executive coaching and life coaching which is about
 T Is for Training 13

understanding yourself, understanding others, and teams being able to in-

fluence and persuade and get your message across better. Growing into a
new role would be one area. Ironically in business, employers usually pro-
mote the best person at doing the job into the manager’s shoes, thus remov-
ing the best worker from the production line and now asking him or her
to manage others while having no experience or knowledge in managing
or supervising others in behavior, motivation, or dealing with conflict and
stress (all skills you will certainly need to lead others). Sometimes the best
potential manager may not be the best at his current job; if you took the
top leading goal scorer off the field of play and made him the manager,
what might happen?—Well, the team might stop scoring so many goals,
lose matches, and the stressed-out new manager then uses excessive behav-
iors to try and motivate them into being better. The same happens in sales;
the multimillion-dollar deal maker gets promoted to be national sales man-
ager, he stops selling, his customers are unhappy, the sales dip, the directors
make redundancies, and then dismiss the new sales manager for poor perfor-
mance. So be weary of this and use coaching to get your employees right and
ready for any promotions before they step into the new role.
Coaching improves performance, enabling self-doubt to be overcome
and goals to be achieved. It promotes ownership of outputs and improves
attitudes toward personal learning and development. People who have
had a coach are evangelical about the benefits of coaching and are often
the first to suggest coaching as an option for others. Coaching develops
self-awareness and the ability to handle negative feedback, and, because it
is behavioral in nature, it goes deep and allows some fundamental realign-
ments to occur. Many people experience their “eureka moment” in coach-
ing, whether that takes the form ofgreater clarity in rolesand objectives,
personal goals or ambitions or how to forge the best personal interactions
in the workplace.
Coaching also offers significant benefits to the organization by realiz-
ing the potential of people and sparking their engagement and motivation.
Through the ability of people to hit their targets, it grows performance
and builds a culture of learning and success.
The tricky part can be the selection of the coach. Because of the nature
of the relationship, you must be certain that the chemistry between the
individual and the coach is “right.” Any coach worth their salt will give you
14 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

an introductory session to see if that chemistry is right. After all, they don’t
want to be seated there in a rapport vacuum any more than you do. You’ll
also need to decide what form of accreditation you want to see from your
coach. Some are academically qualified and might lack the business skills
you seek. Others might be too commercially focused and not academic
enough. It’s a personal thing. And one last thing on coaching. Coaching
is not therapy (although some people can experience it as such). Your
coach is there to support you in your work-based learning. From time to
time, this will involve crossing the threshold into your private life, but a
good coach should know how far that conversation should be allowed to
go. If you need a therapist or if you think you are ill, seek a specialist and
not a coach.

Learning from Training Courses

Training courses are useful ways of developing skill sets in a number of

people in one session. As such, they are considered value for money and
can create great outcomes provided you can partner with a creative train-
ing provider. Productivity usually increases when a company implements
training courses; they can improve performance across a range of areas, not
just the direct topic of that particular course. By investing to training for
your staff, you are likely to see improvements in competitiveness, morale,
customer satisfaction, cross team working, communications, willingness,
and tie management. You can also see reductions in turnover and absen-
teeism, recruitment, workplace accidents and grievances, and industrial
relations style incidents. Training also makes a company more attractive to
potential new recruits who seek to improve their skills and the opportuni-
ties associated with those new skills.
The question remains as to what courses should you offer? This of
course will depend on the training strategy and any work that may have
been done on a training needs analysis. Over the years, we have found
these topics to be the most commonly requested:

Developing your strategy with all or some of the employees involved

Developing a strategy—directors only
 T Is for Training 15

Leadership and management skills

Presentation skills
Coaching for managers
Team development
Team building
Problem solving
Change
Succession planning
Induction and onboarding
Leading safely
Behavioral safety
Networking
Performance management process
Basic understanding of HR and Employment Law for all managers
High-potential development and talent spotting and management
Assessment centers
Finance for non-accountants
Project management
Negotiation skills
Unconscious bias training
Interviewing skills
Well-being and mindfulness—managers understanding stress
Sales and upselling
Getting to Yes
Getting past No
Report writing

In addition, the role of simulation exercises, business war-games, and

decision-making games and facilitated workshops that were discussed in
our earlier volumes are also great for upskilling people and sharing best
practice. In fact, these can often create much more positive outcomes
than simply “sending someone on a course.” Any engaging training
­provider or facilitator should be able to create a bespoke learning
environment to target at specific need. And if they can’t, then contact us
because we certainly can.
16 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

Learning from Self-Discovery or Reflection

Sociologist Jack Mezirow famously said that “A defining condition of being

human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experience.”
Reflecting on work enhances its meaning. Hold a mirror up to my
face and I have to study who I am, warts and all. Reflection is a powerful
tool, giving us the chance to look back on events and contextualize them
somewhere in our understanding of events.
Reflective learning can be fuelled through learning sets. Self-managed
learning (SML) is an independent and interdependent process of learning
in which individuals are the key controllers of their own learning and the
prime dictators of their own outcomes. Sometimes seen as part of an orga-
nization’s overall training and development strategy, SML is not a training
event in the traditional sense of the term. There is no common syllabus or
timetable, but is characterized by an emphasis on the individuals to identify
their own learning needs and follow this through in a live organizational
context. The learning aims can be varied, allowing theoretical as well as
very precise skills to be pursued. We’ve grown our own skills through this
enlightened and enabled approach and it is highly recommended.
A key component and driver of learning in the concept of SML is the
learning group, normally four to six people strong and often created as
part of a learning cohort on a high-potential leadership or management
skills program. The group is the primary place where each person negoti-
ates their contract for learning and then carries out actions and reflections
on their obligations, so people become accountable to themselves and to
each other. This shared responsibility drives deep commitment. Groups
meet periodically (with a frequency dictated by the group itself ) and the
format of such sessions normally includes time for each individual to dis-
cuss or present their progress to date with their chosen learning topic in
a forum where other members of the group are encouraged to comment,
provide feedback, and suggest direction. Each member of the group will
typically be given a fair share of “air time” within the group to discuss
their own case, and is expected to play an active part in the feedback,
encouragement, and direction offered to other members of the learning
set. Discussions should be confidential, candid, honest, and objective.
Learning groups like this are about individuals taking control of what
 T Is for Training 17

and why they learn, and how this happens. A successful group will offer a
good balance of pressure, respect, support, and direction, building on its
own uniqueness, both real and perceived, to encourage members to try
out new ideas, provide suitable feedback—negative if necessary—to keep
its members on track to achieve their prestated aims. Individuals may also
build a useful peer network that they will continue to draw upon after the
learning has been completed.
SML can take place without the learner leaving the workplace, bring-
ing the learning contract directly into contact with the “real” organization
and working environment. This reality gives authenticity to the learn-
ing process and thus the individual’s job development and learning path
become inexorably intertwined.
Reflection in this way involves linking a current experience to previous
learnings (a process called scaffolding), drawing forth cognitive and emo-
tional information from several sources. To reflect, we must act upon and
process the information, synthesizing and evaluating the data. In the end,
reflecting also means applying what we’ve learned to contexts beyond the
original situations in which we learned something.

Learning from Sharing Best Practice

Facilitated workshops (described elsewhere), interactive courses (de-

scribed earlier), and learning sets (also described earlier) offer opportuni-
ties to share best practice. Best practice is the change for people to work
together with their peers and to learn from each other. Establishing a
corporate knowledge sharing strategy, promoting a culture of knowledge
sharing, and leveraging learning technology to execute these efforts can
drive organizational growth and help reach positive business outcomes.
SBP (also sometimes known as Communities of Practice) sessions come
in a variety of guises and so can be a formal part of training or run sepa-
rately as informal events targeted around a problem. Sharing knowledge
is an essential ingredient for business prosperity; however, a recent survey
by Brandon Hall Group found that only one-third of organizations have
a defined corporate knowledge sharing strategy. The study also discovered
that only 20 percent of companies believe their knowledge sharing efforts
18 CAN YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS WITH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS?

are effective. You don’t need a big budget, but to get value from these ses-
sions you are well advised to employ a specialist facilitator who will hold
the boundaries and encourage contribution. Sharing best practice is as
old as civilization itself. Consider the following story of Ugg and Thugg.
The Neanderthals sat huddled around the fire. The soft orange light
reflected from the walls of the large cave in which they were gathered,
giving an eerie light to proceedings. From the walls of the cave the dull
handprints and paintings of the top mammoth hunters from all ancestry
hung over the group, reminding them of just why they were here.
Ugg grunted first. He grunted of how he and his team of hunters
had worked all day to corner the great mammoth whose carcass now
filled their bellies. It was the first time they’d eaten mammoth in many
moons. The other hunters sat and listened as Ugg told the tale of how he,
newly returned to the community from sabbatical work with the tribe
on the other side of the stream, demonstrated how he had used his new
“cat-a-pult” process to maximum effect to bring down the giant beast.
They listened in awe. “Cat-a-pult.” What a strange device. The hunters
glanced uneasily at each other as Ugg handed round the new device for
them all to look at. They poked it and grunted excitedly.
The mighty Thugg grunted back loudly. He queried Ugg on his
exploits. What was this weird-looking “cat-a-pult” device that Ugg had
used? How had it made him approach the hunt in a different and more
successful way? What lessons could he share? Could Ugg show them all
how to use it?
Ugg shifted uncomfortably in his loincloth and picked a gristly piece
of mammoth flesh from between his few remaining teeth. Thugg was a
powerful caveman who certainly knew what he was grunting about. He’d
been the community’s most successful mammoth bagger of recent times.
What he didn’t know about mammoth bagging could be smeared on the
walls of the largest cavern in the valley. Why should he be interested in
what Ugg had to say? Didn’t he know it all already?
But thanks to his ever-growing prefrontal cortex, Thugg knew that he
could learn from Ugg. Ugg had been to the wacky tribe across the stream,
he’d seen how they used that new-fangled catapult thing-a-ma-jig, and he’d
brought that knowhow back to the group. Sending him there had been
worthwhile after all. If the hunters whose faces he could see now in the dim
 T Is for Training 19

glow of the fire could master this new technology, then there was hope for
the tribe after all. If they could share Ugg’s expertise, then this community
could be the greatest mammoth bagging group of all time, securing complete
market domination within even the shortest planning horizon . . . maybe they
could make a better catapult capable of bringing down even bigger mam-
moths . . . profits would soar, and he might get promotion to the Board . . .
You get the message.
Working and talking together to share new and best practices isn’t
new. Ugg and Thugg did it as part of an intuitive process millions of years
ago. That intuition remains strong with us today. We know it makes sense
to share our stories and new ways of working with our colleagues and yet
so few of us manage to squeeze in any time to do this. Result? Our mam-
moth bagging techniques are outdated, impractical, and we are seldom
at our best. In short, we are not all using the catapult. The moral of the
story? Schedule time for your team to come together to share stories. By
sharing experiences, they will share new thinking, generate new ideas, and
will soon be sharing best practice.
You know it makes sense.

Remember These Golden Rules about Training

Train people so they can leave, treat them so they don’t.
Training must be meaningful and relate to a measurable job/task
improvement
RoIs are hard to measure and might be wrong
Training should align people to their personal goals and ambitions
Take a balanced approach: 70/20/10 is pretty good
Coaching works!
Don’t just throw money at it—target it
Remember, 80 percent is behavioral; so focus on that bit
 Index
A is for announcements, 33–46 ask questions, 27–28
content spiral, 37–39 communicate, 29
presentations, 39–41 give thanks, 29
presenter, delivering message as, involve, 28
41–43 let go, delegate more, 28
speak up and stand tall, 42–43 reprimand in private, 29–30
supporting talk, 43–45 reward, 30–31
bullets, avoiding, 45–46 support learning, 30
keep it short, 44 think, 31
pictures use, 44–45 encouraging own self, 25–26
ACTION, xxii negative feedback, damages, 23
“And?”, xxiii–xxiv self-direction, 22
ANNOUNCE, xxiii SPECTRUM to encourage others,
Appraisals, conducting, 50–51 26–27
ENCOURAGE, xxiii
BEER model, 52 Encouraging own self, 25–26
Berry, Stephen, 35 EVIDENCE, xxii
BLOOD acronym, xx
B is for Brand, xx Feeling of success, 60
D is for Decisions, xx Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, 3
L is for Leadership, xx
O is for Opportunities, xx GREEN manager, 53
O is for Outcomes, xx
Blood, Sweat, and Tears acronym, Individuals, reviews of, 49–53.
xix–xxiii See also under Reviews
BLUE manager, 54
BRAND, xxi Key performance indicators (KPI), 48
Business level, success at, 60–63
7 Laws of Magical Thinking, 35
Chartered Institute of Personnel and LEADERSHIP, xxi
Development (CIPD), 8 Learning, 11–14
Coaching, 12–14 from coaching, 12–14
benefits, 13 from mentoring, 12–14
Communication, 29 online, 11–12
Critical self-talk, challenging, 26 from reflection, 16–17
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 3 from self-discovery, 16–17
from sharing best practice, 17–19
DECISIONS, xxii “tick box” philosophy, 12
Delegate more, 28 from training courses, 14–15
Massive open online courses
E is for encouragement, 21–32 (MOOCs), 12
critical self-talk, challenging, 26 Mentoring, 12–14
encouraging others, 21–25 Mezirow, Jack, 16
74 INDEX

Online learning, 11–12 GREEN manager, 53

On-the-job training (OJT), 10–11 RED manager, 53
OPPORTUNITIES, xxi YELLOW manager, 54
Ourselves, reviews of, 55–57 SPECTRUM to encourage others,
OUTCOMES, xxii 26–27
STRATEGIC DIRECTION, xxii
PEG model, 52–53 Strategies of the Serengeti, 35
Performance reviews, SPECTRUM SUCCEED, xxiii
impact on, 53–54 Support learning, 30
Personal success, 63 SWEAT acronym, xx
Presentations, 39–41 A is for Action, xx
Presenter, delivering message as, 41–43 E is for Evidence, xx
Projects, reviews of, 54–55 S is for Strategic direction, xx
T is for Time, xx
R is for Reviews, 47–58 W is for What if?, xx
RED manager, 53
Reflection, 16–17 T is for training, 1–19. See also
Reprimand in private, 29–30 Learning
Return on Investment (ROI) of effective ways, 8–19
training, 3 methods, 2
REVIEW, xxiii needs, establishing, 4–5
Reviews, 48–49 objectives, 2
of business, 48–49 online, 11–12
of individuals, 49–53 on-the-job training (OJT),
appraisals, conducting, 50–51 10–11
BEER model, 52 Return on Investment (ROI) of, 3
PEG model, 52–53 strategy, 1–3
SMART objectives, 50 trainees, 2–3
of ourselves, 55–57 behaviors, 7
weekly schedule, 57 knowledge, 7
of projects, 54–55 quality of, 5–8
SPECTRUM impact on skills, 7
performance reviews, 53–54 training spend problem, 5
Reward, 30–31 “Tick box” philosophy, 12
ROWE (Results Only Work Team level, success at, 60–63
Environment), 22 TEARS acronym, xxi
A is for Announcements, xxi
S is for success, 59–67 E is for Encouragement, xxi
at business level, 60–63 R is for Review, xxi
feeling of, 60 S is for Success, xxi
personal success, 63 T is for Training, xxi
at team level, 60–63 Thanks giving, 29
Scaffolding, 17 TIMINGS, xxii
Self-direction, 22 TRAIN, xxii
Self-discovery, 16–17 Training courses, learning from,
Self-managed learning (SML), 16–17 14–15
SMART objectives, 50
SPECTRUM impact on performance WHAT IF, xxii
reviews, 53–54
BLUE manager, 54 YELLOW manager, 54
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